The goal of StARE (Stopping Antibiotic Resistance Evolution) is to protect European citizens’s health and the environment via water quality research, by minimizing the impact of discharges from urban wastewater treatment plants (UWTPs) and contributing to sustain safe water cycles.

According to WHO, antibiotic resistance is a global threat for human health, driven by many interconnected factors, where water plays a key role. UWTPs are major sources of antibiotic residues, resistant bacteria (ARB) and resistance genes (ARG) into the environment and, therefore, represent crucial control points for efficient technological intervention. Though ARB&G are well characterized clinically, their occurrence in aquatic environments, relation to the regional use of antibiotics, or temporal/geographical variations are poorly understood.